Renaissance Molly

As my husband was helping me edit my book. Somehow we started a quarky and rather irritating conversation:

So we had a long discussion about these things. I could answer all these questions, as the author, in a manner that made sense to the both of us but, in my mind, the conversation was about something very different, about a fundamental part of my writing, and of all writing: Detail.

So when is there too much detail and when is there not enough??

So, sure: I can talk about the specific bean type they used and how they ground the coffee and the history of the coffee bean as it arrived from Earth to Lestios (as I envision it in the book). I could produce receipts and an entire economy around which the coffee bean can be centered and how certain times of years or political events can change the price and quality of coffee. I can go into the socio political implications coffee has on the radical nature of Tamarian cities and draw parallels to American Revolutionary Coffee and Tea cultures in a similar vein.

BUT WHY?! When are these things interesting to a reader and when are they boring? I believe the fundamental difference is when the detail given by the author helps drive the story in some way. But, like many writers, I continue to struggle.

Ultimately, unable to fully answer this question on my own, I turned to writers on the Internet who have also wrestled with this question. Here were some of the things I learned (and parenthetical links to their blog posts so you can read in greater detail).

Detail as a writing aid:

One thing we also have to consider in the pursuet of the answer "how much detail is too much?" comes with the quetion "What is the purpose of your writing?"

Some people write to process. Flannery O'Conner said "I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say."

I must admit that I scoffed at this the first time I saw it posted on Pinterest somewhere. It wasn't until I started blogging that I fully understood the meanng of the post. I calculate out things I'll be writing in my book or any academic writing. However with the blog, I find that I am prompted (like today's post) to do research because I hope people will respect my writing as at least partially substantiated.

Journals, blogs, even fiction can be used to process how writers make decisions about life or their plot and characters. This is not bad: It can lead to some wonderful plot twists and characterizations which produce nice unexpected turns, but may lead to unnecessary detail at times.

On the flip side, fictional writing (or perhaps blogging as well) should not be devoid of detail. Detail is what draws a reader in and makes them envision a scene.

So How Much Then??

"Molly, you didn't answer the question, you just talked about it more. That was boring so I skipped here." Ok here we go:

On this same topic, this writer quoted the movie "Inception." He says "when one character was teaching another how to construct dreams, he explained that she should only use enough detail to make the dream seem real, but not to detail everything…let the dreamer’s mind fill in the details themselves. This struck me as surprisingly good advice for writers." (Check out the full blog post here)

I think this speaks for itself: enough to set the scene and make it real, but not so much that the reader is overwhelmed.

Where is the tipping point of "Overwhelmed"?

One writer writes a blog post about how giving detail for each and every scene and instance in your writing will make the reader feel lost in detail. With such a situation, the reader will not know which parts are very important and which parts are insignificant because you are communicating the same level of detailed significance to everything. (check out the full blog post here ).

Where to start?

Shannon Donnelly helps guide writers in the correct direction with her blog post. One of the pieces of advice she gives which stuck out to me was detaling the scene's strongest sensation first. (See her full post here ). How incredibly natural! When walking into a stunning and memorable situation, you are immediately bombarded by whatever sense is most stimulated. Walking into a fresh bakery would stimulate your noise before anything else. Likewise, walking into an opera house while a performace was happening would prompt you to stop and listen. I was struck by how natural this approach is and yet how I fail to do so in my writing since I, as the writer, can also get lost in details.

Finally, Emma Darwin talks about economy of words and the quality of word strength in her blog post (read her full post here). I believe this is not a new concept, but it's always a refreshing reminder during editing and her examples are also refreshing.

Sometimes though I think one novice to another can say it best: "One good indicator of having too much detail is if you start to get bored when you write it or when you reread it. If you're bored then how do you expect your readers to be interested?" (Take a look Sysanet's post and others in the discussion here ).

An Example Pops to Mind:

I think of fundamental story telling and for whatever reason this story comes to my mind. My husband and I went out to dinner with another couple and so they started telling us a story. I honestly cannot remember what it was about but I remember this: One of the two said the story took place on a Tuesday, the other broke in to say it was in fact on a Wednesday because they remembered there being Bible study that evening and so they were getting ready for it before the story started happening, then the first came back and asked "No I could have sworn it was Tuesday because I went to Walmart in the afternoon that day and the only day I could do that was on a Tuesday because that's my day off." This is not a joke: this happened. Ultimately, whatever the story was about, I know the point was not affected by whether it occurred on a Tuesday or a Wednesday. I remember thinking to myself "What does it even matter?" But for whatever reason, it was important to the story tellers. I remember this sometimes when I'm writing: How often do we as writers get so caught up in our own details that we loose the main point of the story?